The Delphi Room (13 page)

I really liked the challenge of creating within set boundaries, like the way I imagine great sonnet writers loved the thrill of contorting words to fit. Not that I am comparing myself to any great sonnet writers, mind you. Now that you have brought up writing I am thinking about my characters again. I used to lie awake at night, much like you described—except I did not tap on my walls—and play out scenes in my head. Like your Shadowman, Clara would sometimes give me the occasional line, or good idea. But she’s an actress, not a writer. From what I had read of Harlequin romance novels, there is quite a license to be dramatic. I bet you have a real talent for writing that sort of thing. I wonder if I would have made money at it.

Prior to the English countryside plot I had tried three others. One was set in a small Minnesota town, one in Paris and the other in Tuscany. I have never travelled to any of those places, just like I have not travelled to the Cotswolds, but I bought guidebooks and thought that I could improvise my way. But nothing in the first three really seemed to jell. I am not sure why. I think it is important to select the right names for your characters; if you name them wrongly they simply refuse to animate. Maybe that is what happened. I was on the wrong nomenclatural path. I did hit on the perfect nom de plume for myself, though. I am not sure if anyone writes Harlequin romance novels under their real name, which is kind of a shame. And a man’s name is, of course, not really appropriate. So: “Charlotte O’Shaughnessy.” It has a nice ring to it, does it not? I was a reverse George Eliot!

I cannot believe we share such similar taste in art—and movies. I watched
Casablanca
611 times. That may seem like a lot, but you really do notice something different with each viewing. It is my favourite movie, aside from the ones starring Clara Bow. No star was ever as beautiful. She had a very tragic life. Sometimes, in her films, her eyes are so bottomless with sorrow it is as if she is appealing directly to the audience for rescue and salvation. But I digress . . .  I tried to watch
A Clockwork Orange
once, but I only made it to the halfway mark. It gave me nightmares.

I can picture you as a costume designer! I have always been an admirer of people in the theatre. I went to a few plays in Toronto, and you are quite right, there was magic in the air. Except for a really bad production of
Picnic
. The leading actress sounded like she had sucked helium backstage, and the leading man was about twenty years too old for the part. Anyway, while seeing a good play you do forget everything else. I was more of a watch-movies-at-home-guy, though, especially in the last year before I died. All of those people gathered in one theatre at one time I found a bit unnerving, and while I know not everyone thinks this way, I was growing more bothered at the thought of who might have sat in my seat before me. Again, the germ predicament. I know you understand.

I was very interested in the floating sensation you described. I am not sure I have ever experienced that. Sometimes, just as I was falling asleep, I experienced a floating-spinning sensation, as though I was commencing warp speed to another planet. But then I might have been, and simply failed in my takeoff. You know, astral projection. Perhaps to Andromeda, where I might have originated. Was your novella set in Andromeda? You mentioned interstellar circus performers—fascinating stuff. In everyday life—on Earth—I had more of a trembly feeling, the sense that my heart was beating too loud and everyone could hear. I guess you had the “floats” and I had the “shakes.” Maybe shaking and floating are two forms of the same thing.

In light of our respective mirror revelations, is it possible to believe that reality is in fact a film, stored away in a Great Canister somewhere? Are we real? Or are we scraps on the editing room floor? And if we have been cut from the story, does that mean we do not exist at all? How would we know? We are in an interesting position to debate this. We are still real, are we not? I feel that I am. Perhaps that is the key: I feel.

I have two degrees: a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science. You see, I could not quite make up my mind. I am a bit of a dabbler, a bit of a dilettante. So I drifted here, I drifted there, but in the end I am not sure what it all amounted to.

I know what it is like to miss a father that you do not remember. It taxes one’s powers of invention.

I do not think my mother loves me, anymore. Actually, sometimes I questioned whether she ever did. If she did, she doesn’t now. But that is a different story.

Velvet, my eyes are now as blue as the ocean. When the scenes in my mirror stop playing, the electronic snow only remains for a while, and then the mirror once again becomes a faithful reflector of my room and me. Right now it shows that my eyes are lit with a strange light, an alien glow. Maybe these are my original eyes. How about yours?

How long do you think we have been here? In some moments it feels like forever, and in others only a few minutes. I am afraid I cannot even hazard a guess. I suppose it is irrelevant. Do you have this same sensation? The sensation that your ability to judge time has gone from you, that you exist in a Black Hole? I imagine you do. And I guess that we do exist in a Black Hole, in actual fact—it is not merely a sensation. I once read that the time continuum is like a piece of twisted ribbon, and if we knew enough we could slide back and forth along it. We could also walk through walls. But that is a different story.

I would like to learn more about the Shadowman. Could it be possible that you and I are alike? I’ve never met anyone like me before. Loneliness is a disease that is hard to cure, is it not?

I am not hungry, which is a great blessing. I hope you are not hungry. Perhaps we will not be tortured on all fronts.

Have you ever heard such quiet in your life?

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

Jesus. Someone’s a little sensitive about his mother. How dare he lecture me about sensitivity, or my fate—if I still had one. Sanctimonious little shit. (I had written “Dear Brinkley, Fuck you” at the top of a page, but then decided that if I did indeed have a case to plead, writing such a letter would not be a point for the defence.
The Devil made
me do it!
I could probably plead that I didn’t know the rules of social etiquette still applied in Hell. I thought honesty and bluntness were requirements in the pursuit of “Truth.” Were we pursuing “Truth”? What for? Well, we had nothing better to do. When in doubt, a little existentialist philosophizing never hurt anyone.) Seriously, if you can’t tell it like it is to your next-door neighbour in Hell, who
can
you be honest with? So he thinks “crazy” is an abominable word. (And speaking of abominable words, who uses a word like “abominable?”) This from a man who I’d just watched carry on a conversation with—and sing a lullaby to—a long-dead movie star. (So Clara Bow was some sort of time traveller? Or Brinkley needed a pharmaceutical adjustment? And why was she so interested in him, anyway?) And Harlequin romance novels? A
guy
who writes Harlequin romance novels? Of course, it’s not that he was claiming to be composing any great masterpiece, and I have always maintained a love for the “beauty school dropouts of life,” so to speak, but . . . A reverse George Eliot? Well, there was, I had to admit, something faintly daring about a man writing a romance novel. And why did he think I would be great at writing that kind of stuff? Was that supposed to be a compliment? (I hoped he wasn’t expecting me to become his romance-writing-partner. Hell’s Harlequin duo. The Ellery Queen of bodice-rippers.) Anyway, he’d seen me carve up my wrist in Davie’s bathroom. I could use the word “crazy” if I wanted to. (I was terrified about what else the mirror might show him. Funny, the desire to keep up appearances never goes away. Well, he knew about the Shadowman. It was a little late for image maintenance. But I had not been, as he so wrongly put it, having a dalliance with the Shadowman—he was a stalker, not a lover.) And yes, he was right, my mother was bonks, too. So what? We’re all a bunch of crazies. You can love someone and still call a spade a spade.

The scene of Brinkley (one who apparently took celebrity worship a bit too far) in my mirror, and the electronic snow that followed it, had vanished. I approached the glass; my eyes were blue. Not blue running helter-skelter over blackish, but pure brilliant aquamarine. They were glowing and free of bruising or blood vessels; they were larger than I remembered and so limpid as to be almost watery, like you could touch them and rings would shudder out to the edges. Everything else looked the same except my eyebrows, which, upon close-up inspection an inch from the glass, appeared to be finer and fairer, with several very blonde hairs that looked white amidst the darker ones. I attempted to take deep breaths, but my diaphragm failed me, and they turned into short, shallow gasps that quickened until I leaned into the wall, saw silver stars, and then sank to the floor. I lay on my back with my head turned to one side, looking into the dim under the bed.

I went through a phase once where I wore coloured contact lenses all the time: blue, green, purple, hazel, amber. I thought blackish-brown eyes were boring, and I liked being able to match my irises to my outfits. In fact, I often wished that eyes were like one of those slot machines with the pictures that you try to match up; I wanted to pull a lever on the side of my head and have my eyeballs spin to a different hue. Though looking back, if I’m forced to admit it, there was something comforting about being able to take out my eye colour at night and see the same old eyes staring back at me. Contacts were part of my costume, part of the armour. This was different. My eyes, like Brinkley’s, looked alien. Speaking of alien, he originated in Andromeda? Oh my God! Who’s really the nuttiest person in Hell? And why, despite the fact that he was a sanctimonious little shit, did his bizarreness make him so appealing? Typical, Velvet, you always go for the loons, and even in Hotel Hades you’re no different. Of course, to be fair—and when one is being held captive by self-evaluation, I guess fairness is somewhat inevitable—I didn’t really have the right to call him crazy, without being sanctimonious myself. The Shadowman had always seemed to be my one big problem—a huge problem, I admit—but I considered myself pretty normal, otherwise. Brinkley appeared to have so many oddities. But so what? It was kind of comforting, seeing his weirdness. And him seeing mine. It’s funny, even in Hell, the urge to consider oneself better than another is ever-present. Anyway, there was something otherworldly about my irises’ H2O-glow, no sign of my personality or memories dog-paddling the blue depths, only an infant’s purity. I was sporting the Tabula Rasa of eyeballs.

Unidentified scary-movie-music thrummed through my head. In my mind’s eye I was dressed in a trench coat, drawing a pistol from my pocket as I moved toward a blind corner. A mist floated across my imaginary moon and footsteps tickled the air. I drew my lids shut and tried to feel if there was any change in sensation beneath them: heat or cold, pain. Everything felt the same. And I could still see. So far.

It was comforting to know that Brinkley’s eyes were in the same boat. (If I’m going down, man, you’re coming with me.) Both of us, apparently, without a lifejacket.

He said his “blue as the ocean” eyes were the only change that he had noted on himself thus far. Another live wire of fear sparked through me. I ran my fingers over my eyebrows, usually so dense and dark. Was my hair next?

I wondered where the Shadowman was. He hadn’t shown up in a while, which was odd, especially since I had stopped taking my meds three or four months before I’d hung myself, and my little corner of Hell had already failed to protect me from his onslaught. But I felt quite lucid, clear like my eyes. Had Hell decided to save me from the Hell of the Shadowman? Doubtful. (Wishful thinking is like crack cocaine—one hit and you’re hooked.)

I looked over Brinkley’s letter yet again. After his initial snit, his tone seemed warm and confiding. Hmmm . . . moody. Something about his crazy mother bothered me. And it obviously bothered him, too.
I do not think my mother loves me, anymore.

Anymore?